Posted 29 March 2007 - 09:21 AM

Colonel

11 Herbs & Spices

Retired

4,157 posts

Gender:Male

Location:KFC

When you want to buy a car, you don't STEAL a lamborghini, you just buy a car that fit your budget.When you want to buy some food but you think it's too expensive, you don't STEAL it, you just buy another one.

Posted 29 March 2007 - 09:50 AM

Embio

InsanelyMac Legend

Members

976 posts

preferring Kiko's argument there

in reference to Godwin's law - perhaps you would prefer to be compared more to Musolini? I understand your point with the 180 day trial of 2003 server, but my course is 3 years long. And they dont give us the tools we need as you put it. For example, the other day we learned about AD in Windows 2000 Server and that night I decided to go over it again, luckily I had a disc and code available.

As for learning Solaris/BSD/Linux instead I really wish I could combine my hobby and my uni course like that.

Posted 27 April 2007 - 03:39 AM

Posted 27 April 2007 - 10:59 AM

Superhai

InsanelyMac Legend

Retired Developers

1,425 posts

Theres a difference here, and varied degrees of how legal or illegal things are.

1. You can steal a lamborghini or a lada.2. You can steal a copied lamborghini or lada3. You can make your own copied lamborghini or lada4. You can put a lamborghini tag on your lada or lada tag on your lamborghini5. You can buy yourself a lamborghini or lada

Piracy of 'intellectual property' is more vague but,

1. It is not possible to steal it2. It is possible to steal a copy of it (and to get closer to 1. you have to eliminate the originator)3. It is possible to make your own copy of it4. It is possible to call somthing else for the same5. It is possible to buy 'rights'

And finally, if you sing a song someone else has composed (be it in your lamborghini or lada or in your shower) you are stealing according to the music industry, unless you have acquired the rights to do so (which in most cases you haven't as they are all 'all rights reserved').

Posted 30 April 2007 - 03:30 AM

Posted 06 May 2007 - 05:51 AM

pengy

InsanelyMac Protégé

Just Joined

2 posts

I think the whole issue of software piracy is more complicated than people think. Yes, it's illegal, and yes you should not do it. I do think that people should be paid for their work. I am pro-business. An individual or a company should be free to work hard, and be paid for their work, and get a good income/profit from it. If a company makes a billion dollars profit, I say: "Well done!".
But it's not a perfect world. Many large corporations make profits that can cause direct or indirect harm to people, the environment, and other companies. These companies can become world-spanning monopolies, or near monopolies with more power and influence than that of large States.
Drug companies, oil companies, and IT companies like Microsoft can lie, cheat, break the law, and cause great harm. They can become dangerous parasites and public enemies. They can, and will, become the new totalitarian state if we are no very careful. They face little effective opposition. The Linux and Open Source movement is one grass-roots alternative. Some governments are wising-up, and using solar power, or open source. But there are many defeats. The US department of Justice tried..several times to moderate Microsoft's anti-trust behaviour to a reasonable level IMHO, they failed utterly. People were too afraid of what would happen to blue-chip IT shares.
So some people fight back, with warez. If a large corporation cheats, it has a 1000 lawyers, and a billion dollar budget for legal defence. If a poor individual cheats, then they go to jail. Neither is "right".
So while I don't condone software piracy, I can't really condemn it either. Some are criminals, and maybe some are heros, it depends on the intent, more than anything.
I think that the vast majority of people will be honest and obey the law, if there is some sort of fairness in our legal and business world. But the fact of the matter, is that there is no reasonable fairness or justice in our capitalist economy. This is hurting honest businesses, people, and governments everywhere. The stock market has become corrupt, and our master. What used to be an efficient way of allocating resources for the common good is now a burden round all our necks. We are ruining the planet, and letting people die. Our freedoms are dying too, because if just a few big meg-corporations have control, then where is the free market???
It's like the terrorism debate. Terrorists are immoral, but that does not mean that some of them may have legitimate grievences. Most people do not strap explosives to their chests and blow themselves up for no good reason. Yes, a lot are crazy fanatics, but you have to ask how they got that way.
I think that society better start to take a long, hard look at itself, before we doom ourselves to perpetual war and slavery.

Posted 21 June 2007 - 04:32 PM

Posted 22 June 2007 - 11:36 PM

- Doogie

InsanelyMac Protégé

Members

41 posts

Interests:Corrados

I look at it this way, download the software and see if you like, try it out... If you do like it then buy it and you can bet that I will be purchasing a copy of leopard off of store shelves the day it comes out... Until then -

Posted 26 June 2007 - 12:11 AM

Hi guys n girls, my opinion about Software piracy: (music and movies are to much I could write about *g*, but they are the ones with the biggest disprofit)

You really can't say that "all" companies are really hurt when using and not paying for their software.
A big software company here in south-west Germany, that makes a burning software for windows for example, does it most of its overturn with OEM licenses. Think about **** Express, that is shipped with the PC's from the supermarket, if you buy a new CD/DVD Writer, or a DVD-Player that supports **** Digital. The Retail licenses you can personally purchace by stockists and retailers does only a few percent of their business volume. And they don't really care about chasing people using their software for free. But a good thing here is, that they share a 30 day trial for use.

Software, that is programmed by only one or a few persons (mostly shareware) and is not paid for, could ruin the programmers, cause they invest time and sweat and get their money by the purchase of every license. No insurance, ammortisation and subsidations. They really should be paid.

Also, this little programs do a good job and are cheap. But no normal person (I'm a student) could afford to buy a license of Rational Rose, Navision, or best example, the Adobe CS3 Design edition. I think as long as you don't use pirated sofware to make money it's okay. Well, when you make your apprenticeship or study, you don't have money for that, of course.

So why don't use Freeware? Most companies (here in Germany) use common software because they can set it off against tax liability and people that are newly employed can use more resources to learn commercial programs. And if they come from other companies, they are used to the software.

When I think about 5 years ago, (when I wasn't full of age) I went to a vocational college for commercial information technology, almost everybody had notebooks or HDD's to copy fresh pirated stuff in the breaks. It was just common.

So to concise: I do, and for me it's okay, as long I don't use it for commercial purpose only for educational one.
Btw. Germany is under the Top10 software pirating countries which I'm not proud about.

Posted 14 July 2007 - 12:59 AM

Ayanami

How very.

Members

774 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Michigan

I think a few of us are under the category of I'll try it before I buy it. That's why I have 10.5 right now. Same with the CS3 stuff I've tried.
I wonder though....Is it considered piracy to continually use trial software? I seem to find some new OS to try and dislike, or am re-arranging partitions enough that if I run out of time on a trial, I just install it on a new partition w/ a new OS.